Sophonisba Breckinridge
Sophonisba Breckinridge

Author: Anya Jabour

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2019-09-16

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0252051521

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Sophonisba Breckinridge's remarkable career stretched from the Civil War to the Cold War. She took part in virtually every reform campaign of the Progressive and New Deal eras and became a nationally and internationally renowned figure. Her work informed women’s activism for decades and continues to shape progressive politics today. Anya Jabour's biography rediscovers this groundbreaking American figure. After earning advanced degrees in politics, economics, and law, Breckinridge established the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration, which became a feminist think tank that promoted public welfare policy and propelled women into leadership positions. In 1935, Breckinridge’s unremitting efforts to provide government aid to the dispossessed culminated in her appointment as an advisor on programs for the new Social Security Act. A longtime activist in international movements for peace and justice, Breckinridge also influenced the formation of the United Nations and advanced the idea that "women’s rights are human rights." Her lifelong commitment to social justice created a lasting legacy for generations of progressive activists.

The Big Vote
The Big Vote

Author: Liette Gidlow

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM

Published: 2007-03-15

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 080189901X

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This cultural history of voter turnout campaigns in early 20th century America sheds light on the problems that persist in democratic participation today. In the 1920s, America experienced low voter turnout at a level not seen in nearly a century. Reformers responded by launching massive campaigns to "Get Out the Vote.” Yet while these campaigns advocated civic participation, they also promoted an exclusionary message that transformed America’s political culture. By the late 1920s, "civic" would be practically synonymous with "middle class" and "white." At the time, weakened political parties, ascendant consumer culture, labor unrest, Jim Crow, widespread anti-immigration sentiment, and the new woman suffrage all raised serious questions about the meaning of good citizenship. Through techniques ranging from civic education to modern advertising, middle-class and elite whites worked in the realm of culture to undo the equality that constitutional amendments had seemed to achieve. Richly documented with primary sources from political parties and civic groups, popular and ethnic periodicals, and electoral returns, The Big Vote examines the national Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns as well as the internal dynamics of specific campaigns in New York City, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Birmingham, Alabama.

Un-American Womanhood
Un-American Womanhood

Author: Kim E. Nielsen

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 9780814208823

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This book studies the Red Scare of the 1920s through the lens of gender. The author describes the methods antifeminists used to subdue feminism and otehr movements they viewed as radical. The book also considers the seeming contradictions of outspoken antifeminists who broke with traditional gender norms to assume forceful and public roles in their efforts to denounce feminism.

The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters
The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters

Author: Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-02-24

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13:

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The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters explores ways in which these women have been marginalized and recognizes how their contributions will positively influence the organization as it moves into its next 100 years. On February 14, 2020, the League of Women Voters of the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. Although women of color have always made significant contributions to women's suffrage and the women's movements, their contributions, particularly as they relate to the League of Women Voters (LWV), have been marginalized and relegated to the footnotes of the organization's history. The Untold Story of Women of Color in the League of Women Voters adds a new dimension to these conversations. The book is structured to show the progression of the relationship between the League of Women Voters and its members of color as manifested in changes to its policies, practices, symbols, and messaging. It begins with the suffrage movement and continues until the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the League and uses actual correspondence, convention minutes, existing League histories, and personal accounts to tell the League story. Chapter titles disclose the philosophical shifts in attitude at each stage of the organization's evolution.

The U.S. Women's Jury Movements and Strategic Adaptation
The U.S. Women's Jury Movements and Strategic Adaptation

Author: Holly J. McCammon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-04-30

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1107378508

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When women won the vote in the United States in 1920 they were still routinely barred from serving as jurors, but some began vigorous campaigns for a place in the jury box. This book tells the story of how women mobilized in fifteen states to change jury laws so that women could gain this additional right of citizenship. Some campaigns quickly succeeded; others took substantially longer. The book reveals that when women strategically adapted their tactics to the broader political environment, they were able to speed up the pace of jury reform, while less strategic movements took longer. A comparison of the more strategic women's jury movements with those that were less strategic shows that the former built coalitions with other women's groups, took advantage of political opportunities, had past experience in seeking legal reforms and confronted tensions and even conflict within their ranks in ways that bolstered their action.

For the Public Record
For the Public Record

Author: Barbara Stuhler

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2000-06-30

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0313029644

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Through a judicious selection of documents from the papers of the League of Women Voters of the United States in the Library of Congress, Stuhler reveals the rich history of an organization designed to serve the public interest. In the aftermath of the 72-year long effort by American women to win the vote, the League was formed to prepare these new voters for their responsibilities as full participating citizens. The organization's first president, Maud Wood Park, and her associates established Citizenship Schools throughout the nation to educate women, and they were so successful that one newspaper complained, Why not for men, too? Succeeding presidents built the League's reputation as an organization inventive in its dual roles as a voter educator and civic activist. While League members were expected to be nonpartisan, they were also encouraged to be active in their parties, a sometimes confusing posture. Nevertheless, the League—as an advocate in support of specified public policies—succeeded in maintaining an informed nonpartisanship that came to be respected by opinion and political leaders, and the public learned that it could depend upon the League for unbiased information in election contests. In making it possible for women to show their strength and do what they have done for some 80 years, the League has made incalculable contributions to the public good. Students, scholars, and the informed public interested in American political and women's history will find this documentary collection invaluable.

Constitutional Orphan
Constitutional Orphan

Author: Paula A. Monopoli

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-08-07

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0190092815

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In Constitutional Orphan, Professor Paula Monopoli explores the significant role of former suffragists in the constitutional development of the Nineteenth Amendment -- the woman suffrage amendment ratified in 1920. She sheds new light on the connection between the suffragists as institutional actors in civil society and the emergence of a "thin" conception of the Nineteenth Amendment as a mere nondiscrimination in voting rule, rather than a robust equality norm. In this compelling legal history, Monopoli illuminates how the Nineteenth had implications for federalism, women's citizenship and the definition of equality, as well as how gender, race and class intersect to affect our constitutional development. Monopoli explores the choice by both the National Woman's Party and the National American Woman Suffrage Association to turn away from African American suffragists who were denied the vote even after ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Using original sources, legislative history and case analysis, she develops a persuasive theory connecting that moral and strategic failure to the emergence of a narrow interpretation of the amendment. Monopoli also evaluates the impact of class divisions among former suffragist allies. These divisions around support for the NWP's Equal Rights Amendment, found social feminists opposing that "blanket" amendment for fear of its impact on the constitutional validity of protective labor legislation for working-class women. Monopoli details how many state courts, left without federal enforcement legislation to guide them, used strict construction to cabin the emergence of a more robust interpretation of the Nineteenth Amendment, as a broad equality norm. She concludes with an examination of new legal scholarship that suggests ways in which such a robust understanding of the Nineteenth Amendment could be used today to expand gender equality. In this compelling legal history, Monopoli illuminates how gender, race and class intersect to affect our constitutional development.

Our War Too
Our War Too

Author: Margaret Paton-Walsh

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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In the late 1930s, a number of American women—especially those allied with various peace and isolationist groups—protested against the nation's entry into World War II. While their story is fairly well known, Margaret Paton-Walsh reveals a far less familiar story of women who fervently felt that American intervention was absolutely necessary. Paton-Walsh recounts how the United States became involved in the war, but does so through the eyes of American women who faced it as a necessary evil. Covering the period between 1935 and 1941, she examines how these women functioned as political actors-even though they were excluded from positions of power-through activism in women's organizations, informal women's networks, and even male-dominated lobbying groups. In the "Great Debate" over whether America should enter the war, some women favored aid to the Allies not because they hoped for war but because they hoped aid would forestall more direct U.S. involvement-but also because they believed war was preferable to a Nazi victory. Paton-Walsh shows that this activism involved some of the most prominent women of their day. Elizabeth Cutter Morrow-whose son-in-law, Charles Lindbergh, was an isolationist spokesman-supported the revision of the Neutrality Acts to allow the sale of arms to the Allies and expressed her support in a national radio broadcast. Soon other women joined this debate: Esther Brunauer of the AAUW, journalist Dorothy Thompson, and organizations like the League of Women Voters and National Women's Trade Union League broke from the pacifist tradition to advocate American aid for the Allied cause. Focusing on the conflict in Europe, Paton-Walsh shows how these women grasped the implications of the Lend-Lease program for America's entry into the war but supported it nevertheless. By late 1941, the Women's Division of the Fight for Freedom Committee had been established; no longer merely advocating aid to Britain to keep American boys out of battle, this organization supported direct American involvement in the war as a means of stopping Nazi oppression. While most historians have focused on women's pacifism, Paton-Walsh connects women more directly to world events and shows how those interventionists reformulated maternalist ideas to justify and explain their beliefs. Our War Too is a story of American women trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, to preserve both their principles and their peace. It expands our understanding of women as political actors and thinkers about foreign policy as it sheds new light on American public opinion over the build-up to the war.

Battling Miss Bolsheviki
Battling Miss Bolsheviki

Author: Kirsten Marie Delegard

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-05-28

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0812207165

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Why did the political authority of well-respected female reformers diminish after women won the vote? In Battling Miss Bolsheviki Kirsten Marie Delegard argues that they were undercut during the 1920s by women conservatives who spent the first decade of female suffrage linking these reformers to radical revolutions that were raging in other parts of the world. In the decades leading up to the Nineteenth Amendment, women activists had enjoyed great success as reformers, creating a political subculture with settlement houses and women's clubs as its cornerstones. Female volunteers piloted welfare programs as philanthropic ventures and used their organizations to pressure state, local, and national governments to assume responsibility for these programs. These female activists perceived their efforts as selfless missions necessary for the protection of their homes, families, and children. In seeking to fulfill their "maternal" responsibilities, progressive women fundamentally altered the scope of the American state, recasting the welfare of mothers and children as an issue for public policy. At the same time, they carved out a new niche for women in the public sphere, allowing female activists to become respected authorities on questions of social welfare. Yet in the aftermath of the suffrage amendment, the influence of women reformers plummeted and the new social order once envisioned by progressives appeared only more remote. Battling Miss Bolsheviki chronicles the ways women conservatives laid siege to this world of female reform, placing once-respected reformers beyond the pale of political respectability and forcing most women's clubs to jettison advocacy for social welfare measures. Overlooked by historians, these new activists turned the Daughters of the American Revolution and the American Legion Auxiliary into vehicles for conservative political activism. Inspired by their twin desires to fulfill their new duties as voting citizens and prevent North American Bolsheviks from duplicating the success their comrades had enjoyed in Russia, they created a new political subculture for women activists. In a compelling narrative, Delegard reveals how the antiradicalism movement reshaped the terrain of women's politics, analyzing its enduring legacy for all female activists for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.